Freud Where Prohibited: The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and Freud's Last Session, reviewed, and In Praise of Frank Britton

Julie Garner, Brian Hemmingsen, Scott McCormick, and Maboud Ebrahimzadeh

Brian Hemmingsen and Scott McCormick

Julie Garner and Jim Jorgensen

Patrick Bussink and Maboud Ebrahimzadeh as Jesus and Judas

Today in the Washington City Paper, I review two plays that mull over free will and the existence of God, both of which feature Sigmund Freud as a character. The better of the pair, Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, features a towering performance from Frank Britton as Pontius Pilate. 

Around 2:15 Tuesday morning, after he'd left the cast party that followed Judas' opening-night performance, Britton was assaulted and robbed by four or five unidentified attackers near the Silver Spring Metro stop. He underwent surgery at Holy Cross Hospital to treat a broken cheekbone. Britton does not have medical insurance. A crowdfunding campaign to cover his hospital bills (donate here) has raised over $45,000 so far.

I've known Frank for years. I think we first met in 2008, when my then-girlfriend was in a production of Temptation with him at Constellation Theatre Company, but it might've been earlier than that. Everyone I know who's involved with theatre in DC loves him. He's a talented, hardworking, generous artist.

He's going to miss at least a couple of performances of Judas Iscariot as a result of his injuries, which is a shame, because I've never seen him in anything where he was better. (Thony Mena, who already appears in the show as Simon the Zealot and other characters, will stand in for him.) Michael Dove, the artistic director of Forum Theatre, which is staging Judas, visited Frank in the hospital Tuesday and reported him to be in high spirits and eager to get back to work. I hope he will, soon. His current project is a stirring production of a funny, provocative play, and Frank is a huge part of why it's so powerful.

Unfortunately, the production photos Forum made available for Judas do not include any shots of Frank as Pontius Pilate. You'll just have to go see the show, which you should do anyway, if great, intimate theatre is a thing that matters to you. It's at Round House Theatre Silver Spring, next to the AFI Silver cinema, through June 14.

UPDATE: My pal Rachel Manteuffel, who saw Judas Iscariot with me on Sunday, has pointed out I erred in my WCP review when I said that Annie Houston is silent throughout the play after her (excellent) opening monologue. In fact, she has another scene where she is called to the witness stand to testify against her son. I simply forgot it. As I said, it's a long show! I apologize for my mistake.

All photos: Melissa Blackall/Forum Theatre.

Sometimes It Smarts, Being a Smartie: Charm and Bloody Poetry, reviewed.

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Tonya Beckman, Dan Crane, Ian Armstrong, and Esther Williams in Bloody Poetry. (Teresa Castracane/Taffety Punk)

My review of Taffety Punk Theatre Company's "Rulebreaker Rep" -- Kathleen Cahill's Charm, about pioneering feminist Margaret Fuller, and Howard Brenton's Bloody Poetry, about free-loving romantics of the early 19th century -- is in today's Washington City Paper.

When In Glam: Nero/Pseudo, reviewed.

Bradley Foster Smith in Richard Byrne's Nero/Pseudo. (C. Stanley Photography)

Richard Byrne's original glam musical Nero / Pseudo, featuring songs by Jon Langford and Jim Elkington, needs a little more Caligula, I conclude in my Washington City Paper review. Still, it's a project worth following -- and I've been following it for a couple of years. 

Langford was one of my first opportunities to interview an artist I'd long admired. I talked to him for DCist in 2007 in advance of a mekons show and again the following year before his other great band, the Waco Brothers, came to town.

An Athenian, a Broad: The Love of the Nightingale, reviewed

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Matthew Schleigh, Megan Dominy, and Rena Cherry Brown in The Love of the Nightingale. (Stan Barouh)

“It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” is how James Brown and Betty Jean Newsome said it in 1966. (And Brown denied Newsome’s contributions to the song in court decades later, as if to prove the title correct.)

“Woman Is the Nigger of the World,” is how John Lennon and Yoko Ono said it in 1972.

“Every man has a choice to make: Commitment, or new pussy?” is how Chris Rock said it in 1996.

And The Love of the Nightingale is how Sophocles said it two-and-a-half millennia earlier, give or take, which got filtered through Ovid’s brain four centuries later, and then British playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker’s just eight years ago. In her astute update of the sad story of Philomele and Procne, Wertenbaker dares to have one of her characters, an innocent, ask what a myth is.

“The oblique image of an unwanted truth, reverberating through time,” comes the answer.

And the unwanted truth reverberating, hard, through The Love of the Nightingale is this: Men. Are. Dogs.

Woof.

My review of Constellation Theatre Company's The Love of the Nightingale -- the best thing I've seen from that group in its seven-year existence -- continues in today's Washington City Paper, available wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away for free.

Hard Nineteen Twenty-Eight: The Threepenny Opera and Failure: A Love Story, reviewed.

And now, two plays with music, one from 1928 and one set in 1928. My reviews of Signature Theatre's new production of The Threepenny Opera as well as the hub theatre's local premiere of Philip Dawkins' Failure: A Love Story, are in today's Washington City Paper.

Planet Bard: NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage, reviewed.

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Kevin Spacey and Annabel Scholey in the Bridge Theatre Project's Richard III.

Over on The Dissolve today, I review the documentary-with-pretentious-title NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage, about the Bridge Theatre Project's globetrotting Sam Mendes-directed, Kevin Spacey-starring Richard III.

I couldn't use this in my review, but it demonstrates the Herculean rigor of my research and/or how much of my own time I'm willing to waste: In one of the film's performance clips we hear Spacey conclude a speech, “Counting myself but bad ‘til I be best.” I just saw Richard III at the Folger Theater a few months back (here's my review), and I didn't remember that line. Turns out it belongs to Richard III but comes from Henry VI, Part 3, suggesting Mendes & Co. incorporated some material from other plays into their text, a common practice. The film never mentions they did it, though.

Minutes after we watch Spacey do the line in performance, we see a rehearsal clip where he delivers it in a dead-on impersonation of President Clinton.

The Prince of Wails: Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, reviewed.

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Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Edward Gero in Henry IV, Part 1.

That's Edward Gero as King Henry IV. I found out only the other day he was in Die Hard 2: Die Harder, a film I loved in 1990 but which has not aged as well as Die Hard or even Die Hard with a Vengeance. I probably didn't talk about him enough in my tangled but enthusiastic Washington City Paper review of both parts of the Shakespeare Theatre's Company's new, Michael Kahn-directed repertory of Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2.

The Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles' 1965 compression of the Henriad, which I probably spent too much real estate on in the review, is officially, criminally out-of-print, but you can watch it in its entirety for the time being on YouTube. Do.

In Arms' Way: Golda's Balcony and Moth, reviewed.

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Tovah Feldshuh as Golda Meir.

I review Golda's Balcony, William Gibson's 2003 solo play about the life of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, and the U.S. premiere of Australian playwright Declan Greene's Moth in today's Washington City Paper, available wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away for free. Read all about 'em.